Sunday, October 30, 2016

A person dies, someone you love.Mother, father, sister, brother.Then this headline, which today blared,"Girl, 9, dies in bus accident."Oh, dear God, who can bear such news?How could any of us survive?That any do, is miracle.I weep to think of deaths I've known.And yet. And yet. Perhaps it's trueThat for our God, all are alive.I know not what that means, exceptEven when I'm long forgotten,Just a tombstone name, in some book -I'm alive, you're alive, and allWho've ever lived, in him, somehowLive, and move, and have our being.

Scott L. Barton

Another poem on Luke 20:27-38 (see also Haggai 1:15b-2:9; plus Paul, Synoptics, John - you name it!)

The Heart of ItThis really is the heart of it, isn't it?They "neither marry nor are given in marriage."Or try this:"The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former.""We will all be changed.""They thought it was a ghost.""Because I live, you also...."Like a Sadducee,I just can't wrap my head around any of this.And maybe that's the point.This God...this word...this news...this loveChanges everything.Most of all, my heart.This really is the heart of it, isn't it?

Scott L. Barton

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

About Me

I grew up in the church. I remember my 3rd and 4th grade Sunday School teachers at the Niskayuna (NY) Reformed Church, was baptized and confirmed at Bakerstown (PA) Presbyterian Church where I wrote my first sermon; gave a Youth Sunday sermon at my home church, New Hartford (NY) Presbyterian Church; went to Haverford College and Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. Pastorates: Sackets Harbor (Presbyterian), Heuvelton (Presbyterian) and Potsdam (Presbyterian), New York; Bennington, Vermont (Old First Congregational); and Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania (Collenbrook - Presbyterian and U.C.C.), and a “bridge” pastorate at First Congregational Church, Hadley (U.C.C.). I have files upon files of poems for all kinds of occasions, including family greeting cards and personal notes, farewell accolades to colleagues, hymns, and things that just struck my fancy. Retired, I write a poem each week on a lectionary passage. I hope it helps preachers or anybody else who wants to get started thinking about a text in a new way.
Member Tanglewood Festival Chorus in Boston; previously: The Philadelphia Singers Chorale, and Da Camera Singers and Ars Cantorum in Amherst. Tweet @lectionarypoems